How a leadership academy was born

Some years after my arrival at the University of Natal, I was given special responsibility for students and management information, and gave up my original post as deputy vice-chancellor for Planning and Resources.

This was at a time when managing students in South African universities had become extremely challenging and disturbing for university leaders.

At the University of Natal, the leadership felt that someone at deputy vice-chancellor level had to have overall responsibility for students on all three campuses of the University. The lot fell on me, the only African member of the top executive at the time.

My interaction with students led me to realise the need for students and other leaders to get proper training in leadership. With the active participation of students, I designed short courses for student leaders.

I also became aware of the dire need for leadership development in the Church. My wife Teboho and I started running workshops for young people from Catholic parishes in Durban.

Our interest in leadership eventually developed into a conviction that Africa needed good leaders and that there was a real need for establishing a leadership institute in Southern Africa for both generic leadership (for government, companies and other secular organisations) and Christian leadership. This is a conviction that is still with me to this day.

At the time the call appeared to be so strong that Teboho and I both voluntarily resigned from our jobs in Durban to go and set up a leadership institute in Pretoria.

By the time we opened the Lead and Inspire School of Leadership for short courses in Pretoria, I had published a book titled Christian Leadership: A Challenge to the African Church (Paulines Publications Africa), with a foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond M Tutu.

Our concept of leadership had been well thought out and formulated and we thought we knew what we wanted to achieve.

On August 31, 2007, we organised a launch for Lead and Inspire with pomp and ceremony, and with the former minister of education, Professor Sibusiso Bengu, as the guest of honour.

Among other things, we outlined Lead and Inspire’s approach to leadership which was premised on four pillars:

• The traditional African philosophy of ubuntu, which informed our approach to teaching;

• the idea that leadership is a subject that is related to, but distinct from, management; and

• the principles of servant leadership.

Among the organisations we ran workshops and short courses for were the Black Accountants of Southern Africa, the Gauteng and Northern Cape legislatures, and St Joseph’s Institute in Bronkhorstspruit.

One of our most ambitious projects was to register a subsidiary of Lead and Inspire called Batho Community Development Foundation, which ran an empowerment project for young people in the disadvantaged community of Ga-Rankuwa north of Pretoria, to which we donated 12 computers.

As a leadership academy that ran short courses, Lead and Inspire was a real innovation, and many would-be partners and well-wishers commended us for our dynamic approach and the unquestionable quality of our product; but somehow we failed to secure the kind of partnerships and support we needed to be able to penetrate the market.

We, however, managed to get Lead and Inspire registered and accredited to offer diploma qualifications. How we fared in that is the topic of my next column.

In the meantime the need for good leadership in the world appears to be becoming more and more critical.